The more than 2,600 traditional, Protestant marches that take place in Northern Ireland are at the core of unionism and loyalism.

The parades take place from Easter until September. Orange Order members, wearing bowler hats and orange sashes, walk through the streets of almost every town carrying large banners. They are often accompanied by pipe or flute bands.

...The parades are perceived by many in the nationalist community as a threat.

According to academics Neil Jarman and Dominic Bryan who published a recent report on parade culture: "Each parade which is challenged is a symbolic threat to Protestant security and the Unionist position. Each parade that passes through a nationalist area is a restatement of the dominance of the Protestant community and the inferiority of nationalist rights."

In the late 1960s a group of nationalists, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, began to work for change. It catalogued discrimination against Catholics in housing and employment and demanded equal voting rights for all in local government elections. Unionists regarded the civil rights movement with deep suspicion believing that its real objective was to create a united Ireland.

But for those who wish to see Yates die or wither away in prison, I'll say this: Part of what a person learns as they get close to psychosis and begin to understand the life of these tortured minds is that there is no punishment greater for the psychotic than psychosis. A death sentence for Andrea Yates will be as redundant as it is unjust: Yates' life, like her children's, is already over. A prison sentence is equally superfluous: In or out of a tiny cell, Yates was long ago sent to a prison more hellish than anything the state of Texas can build.